One of the guards appraised Kestrel, then opened a box on the side of the wagon and pulled out a green and white tunic, one that had no sleeves, and hung from the shoulders to the knees. “This will fit anyone and it can fit over anything. It can even cover up that mess,” he motioned towards Kestrel’s clothing.
“Thank you gents,” Tewks said as he snatched the cloth and shoved it at Kestrel. “I’ll get him to the next competition now, and he’ll do Lord Ripken proud.”
“He’ll do him prouder if he’s not seen hanging around with the likes of you, young scamp. Now get along,” one of the guards said fondly.
“Thank you Tewks,” Kestrel said as he shrugged the cloth over his head and tugged and pulled to get it properly aligned. “What plans do we have for lunch? Can I buy you something?”
“You can buy me a lot of things – I’ll put a list together for you,” Tewks told Kestrel with a grin. “But we better get you to your next competition first, and then after you win that, we’ll go back and let his lordship provide lunch for both of us.”
They headed to a different part of the competition field, past many on-going matches, and Kestrel noticed a few other archers wearing green and white clothing as well. “What are Exmoor’s colors?” he asked.
“Gold. Black and gold, naturally,” Tewks said. “Now here’s your tourney field,” the boy said. “You shoot fourteen arrows this time. After you win you’re done until late this afternoon.”
“Are there just three rounds?” Kestrel asked.
“Three rounds today and three more tomorrow. You’ll be in all of them,” the boy told Kestrel confidently.
Kestrel arrived on time, and was not the last to arrive. He was placed in the middle of the field, instead of the end for this competition, and ironically found himself next to one of Exmoor’s black and gold archers. The woman scowled at him when he looked over at her.
“Tell your patron that he can’t defeat Exmoor. We control the gold mines, and the money, and we’ll have control of everything my master wants someday no matter what Ripken says,” she spoke with venomness intensity.
Kestrel knew too little of the politics of the Eastern Forest court to rebut her, so he merely shrugged, and his apparent cavalier attitude seemed to upset the woman.
“Archers. Draw your bows,” an announcement rang out for the competition at their field. The contestants prepared themselves, and then the contest began.
Kestrel could not focus his attention during this competition as well as he had in the morning. The excitement of the earlier, short-lived knife fight, then the transformation the power had performed on his skin, along with the Exmoor archer next to him, and the raucous cheering section behind her, all forced him to have to concentrate intently on each shot he took, and his success was not the same as it had been in the morning.
After his first shot hit the center spot, his next shot drifted right, and he over-corrected to the left; he fell behind the Exmoor archer in scoring. The supporters of his opponent began to loudly shout insults, and Kestrel idly wished that the protective skin on his chest had wrapped around his back, as he imagined a knife being thrown at him by the small, vociferous crowd. Yet he also felt determined to show them that he could rise above their threats and taunts.
Kestrel slowed his efforts down, growing more observant, more patient, and more resolute. His shots started consistently hitting the middle of the target. By the time his last shot left his bow he had surpassed the other contestants with a long string of bulls-eyes, and the Exmoor supporters had dwindled away to only a few stalwarts who studiously avoided him as they cheered the efforts of their own contestant.
At the end of his match Kestrel was surprised to find that Tewks was not present. He went and retrieved his arrows, then began to stroll aimlessly in the direction he thought Ripken’s stand was in, deciding that it would make the most sensible base for him to return to.
The field was crowded, and he had to jostle with others in the crowd, receiving generally friendly nods, based, he presumed on the green and white colors of Ripken that he wore.
“Clumsy oaf! Overgrown boy! Fool!” a woman screeched at him as he brushed against her. Surprised by the venom in her voice, Kestrel turned and saw the grinning face of Lucretia.
“I’m glad I finally got your attention; I haven’t been able to find you forever,” she said, linking her arm through his. “Have you had lunch yet?”
Kestrel shook his head no, feeling a sudden new awareness of the emptiness of his stomach at the mention of a meal.
“Come join us for a bite. There’s someone here I’d like for you to meet,” Lucretia nodded towards another woman striding along beside her on the side opposite of Kestrel. Kestrel couldn’t tell her age, because she wore a veil across much of her face, revealing only her eyes and brow between the sheets of fabric that concealed her identity.
“Where do you propose we go?” Kestrel asked. “I was going to go find Lord Ripken’s stand.”
“Not walking in this direction you’re not,” Lucretia answered, just as her friend spoke.
“What did he say?” she asked, making Kestrel sigh.
“You’ll get used to his accent after you listen to him enough; it could take a day or two,” Lucretia replied to her friend. “Let’s go over here,” she pressed Kestrel to his right, and they soon entered a small, guarded, elegant tent, in which a table was set and a pair of servants waited.
“Have a seat Kestrel,” Lucretia told him, releasing her hold on his arm as they entered. Kestrel carefully placed his bow and his arrows on the floor in a corner, then sat down. He covertly looked at the veiled lady, wondering how she was going to eat with the veil in place.
“So Kestrel, you will not believe how extraordinary this is. My friend here, Aurelia, was commenting this morning about the rumors of your death, so I asked her if she would like to have lunch with a dead man,” Lucretia said as she sat down and a servant poured juice into their glasses.
“I heard that you were shot off the top of the east tower,” Aurelia spoke slowly and carefully to Kestrel. “It was widely assumed to be true, especially since so many people had seen Exmoor’s men go chasing out of the banquet last night after you.
“They claimed they hit you with five arrows and knocked you over the edge of the tower roof,” she finished.
She was a lovely girl, older than Lucretia and Kestrel, but with a porcelain pure complexion, brilliant green eyes, and jet black hair that was cut very short.
“Only four arrows actually hit me,” Kestrel replied, speaking slowly and carefully, “they exaggerated.”
“But how,” Aurelia paused, groping for a way to finish her question.
“I am friends with sprites and imps,” Kestrel explained. “They caught me in mid-air, and took me back to the Eastern Forest. A doctor there treated me, and the imps brought me back this morning.”
Both women looked at him with their mouths hanging slightly open, stunned by the incredible story.
“That’s impossible!” Lucretia said at last.
Kestrel shrugged. “Why does Exmoor hate Lord Ripken so strongly?” he asked.
Aurelia looked at Lucretia, who repeated Kestrel’s too-hasty question.
“Exmoor wants to control the whole kingdom, and with all the money he is making with his gold mines, he many succeed,” Lucretia answered.
“Lord Ripken serves in the royal family circles to offer wise advice that is often counter to Exmoor’s wishes,” Aurelia added. “The king listens to Lord Ripken, as I wish the prince would, and so Exmoor cannot control everything he seeks.
“He’ll do anything to attack or discredit Lord Ripken; some people think that the attack on Lord Ripken in the forest two days ago may have been arranged by Exmoor, because the robbers were using violence to harm, instead of their customary thievery.”
“Oh, show Aurelia your ship tattoo!” Lucretia said enthusiastically. She rose from her seat and stepped around behind Kestrel, and before he reali
zed, she reached down and pulled his shirt and tunic up over his head, revealing all the glistening color that covered his chest.
“How magnificent!” Aurelia whispered, staring at the stricken Kestrel’s torso.
“That’s not what I expected,” Lucretia said weakly, looking down, then circling around and kneeling next to Kestrel. “What happened here? Did your doctor do this to you, or perhaps your imps?” she asked.
He shook his head, then flinched as Aurelia’s fingers began to stroke softly along the lines of the drawings. “Please, don’t,” he said gently, then wrapped his fingers around her wrist and gently drew her hand away from his chest.
She looked up at his face, her eyes shining. “I’m sorry, of course,” she said.
“No, not the imps or the doctor,” Kestrel answered Lucretia. “In a sense, I did it to myself.” He pulled his shirt back over his head and covered his chest.
“Can you do anything, or everything? I’m getting the impression that you can,” she replied.
“No,” he answered, “there are many, many things I can’t do.”
“He can’t keep running from my men forever,” Exmoor answered, standing in the doorway of the tent behind Kestrel.
“You dare to come in here?” Aurelia asked in a voice heavy with disbelief.
“Not with any intention of doing any harm to you,” Exmoor replied as four of his men edged around him and into the tent. “We simply wish to remove this insolent person from your company for our own purposes. He has caused quite a bit of havoc already today on the competition grounds, and we want everyone to feel safer by knowing he is being held securely away from the public.
“We could remove her too,” he motioned towards Lucretia, “and make folks feel less embarrassed by her presence.”
“Her presence doesn’t embarrass me,” Aurelia answered immediately.
Kestrel pushed his chair back from the table. “Take me. Leave the girls alone,” he said as he faced Exmoor.
“You know, that sounds like a good idea, and that was my original intention, but the more I think about how valuable it would be to have these ladies under my protection, the more I like the idea,” the mine owner said.
“No,” Kestrel said clearly. “Leave them alone. Take me, or suffer.”
Exmoor smiled, and snapped his finger. More men came into the room. “What will we suffer?”
Kestrel closed his eyes, and thought. He could ask the imps to come, but not enough would come immediately to carry him and both girls away to safety. Or alternatively, he could try to fight, and though the front of his body was well protected, the back was not, and again there were too many to expect to defeat them safely without some likely harm to the girls. Or, perhaps, he could deliberately call upon the power within himself, and toss these threatening men out, as he had done last night. The feeling of the power was almost familiar now, almost something that he could recognize, and through recognition he thought he could find understanding, and control.
He focused inward, looking for the answer, looking for a place where power could reside within him.
“Kestrel, will you do something?” Lucretia asked in a small voice.
He focused further, letting his self-awareness delve deeper into his soul.
There were elements he had never thought of before; ideas about his principles and motivations and he glimpsed a relationship between his morals and his feelings and his powers, connections he had never discovered or considered before, but there was no evidence of the key to using the power.
He heard Aurelia gasp, and turned to see the two women had been seized by a pair of Exmoor’s men each. And he was powerless to stop their seizure.
“Take us together, and keep up together, so that I know the women are treated honorably,” Kestrel submitted reluctantly to Exmoor’s control of the situation.
He heard a moan of regret from Lucretia, who had not expected Kestrel to surrender.
“We’ll keep you together, until nightfall, so that you miss the next round of the tournament,” Exmoor promised. “And we’ll keep a guard on you at all times so you don’t manage any more of these trick escapes of yours.
“Tie them up and wrap them up,” Exmoor said. Kestrel stood passively as one of the men roughly pulled his hands behind his back and tied them together. He watched two other men rip down one of the interior panels of cloth that lined the tent, and then they wrapped him in the cloth, so that he could see nothing.
He felt himself lifted onto their shoulders. “Lucretia, are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes Kestrel, so far,” he heard her reply, and then grunt.
“Stay quiet,” someone said, and they began to move. Kestrel saw an increased amount of light filter through the material he was in as he was carried outside, and then he tried to hold his growing anger in check as they began traveling across the competition grounds to some unknown destination. He felt confident that if he were in a situation with just himself and the girls he would be able to call upon the imps to come save them. But as they rode atop their captors’ shoulders, he began to have doubts about whether or not he could trust Exmoor to really keep the three of them together.
The journey continued on, and Kestrel’s patience waned. “How much further are you taking us?” he asked loudly.
“Be quiet up there,” a voice below his head said.
“Lucretia? Aurelia? Are you okay?” he shouted.
“I said be quiet,” the voice shouted, and he received a punch in his kidneys, but he heard no response from the women.
“Stillwater, Canyon, Killcen, Odare,” Kestrel called out, “I need your help!”
“Hey!” a man close by exclaimed. “Look up there!”
“There’s another one,” the man carrying Kestrel’s legs said.
“I’m in here! Imps, I’m in here!” Kestrel called. He began to kick his legs and thrash his body.
“We’re here, Kestrel!” an imp responded, just as Kestrel felt his activity succeed, loosening the material wrapped around him, and he began to tumble to the ground. He hit it hard and landed on his shoulder, causing terrible pain in the joint.
“Take me away!” Kestrel called.
“Odare!” he heard Killcen shout with concern.
“Set me free!” Kestrel called. He tried to ignore the pain and forced himself to sit up, then turned his head until he shook the cloth enough to cause it to fall down away from his face.
They were in a remote part of the palace gardens, away from other people. One imp was lying on the ground unconscious, while the other three circled protectively, facing off against four elves who surrounded the imps, ignoring Kestrel.
He painfully wrenched his bound hands around from his back to his side and lightly pressed his fingertips around his knife handle, and hoped that the blade’s energy would accomplish the rest. He focused on the elf who appeared most belligerent in his approach to the imps, then flicked the knife upwards.
To his relief his hopes were realized, as the knife ripped through his binding cloth and flew through the air to strike the man in the chest. “Lucretia, return,” he called before the man had even fallen to the ground, and then he flicked the knife out again at another of the men.
As he fell too, the remaining two men fled from the confrontation.
“Is she okay?” Kestrel asked. “Is Odare okay?”
Stillwater came over to Kestrel, as Killcen and Canyon landed next to the injured imp. “One of the elves got lucky and hit her hard with his fist. It knocked her unconscious and she fell to the ground,” the imp said.
“Take my knife and cut me free. Does she need attention?” Kestrel asked.
Stillwater grabbed the knife out of the dead elf, and brought it back to Kestrel. “There were two other captives being carried away with me. Did you see them when you arrived?” Kestrel asked.
“We didn’t see any others carried like you,” Stillwater grunted as he ripped the knife through the fabric, wielding the blade as though it were
a sword in his small hands.
“Could you send someone out to look for them?” Kestrel asked.
“What about Odare?” the imp questioned as he started sawing the blade through the ropes that bound Kestrel’s hands.
“I’ve got a skin with some of the healing water up in my room. As soon as we can find the girls, we can take Odare up to my room and treat her with some of the water,” Kestrel proposed.
“Let us take Odare up first,” Stillwater countered, and Kestrel agreed, even though he worried about the minutes lost that needed to be devoted to the search. Soon after though, after he and Odare were taken up to the top of the tower and returned to his room, he began to treat the unconscious imp, while the three other sprites returned to the gardens and fields to begin searching.
“I found them!” Killcen reported back minutes later. “They were carried into a building,” he told Kestrel as the elf splashed some of the spring water onto his shoulder, and swiftly swallowed a mouthful as well.
“Can you and the others take me there?” Kestrel asked. “What did the building look like?”
“It was a tall building by your standards, with many windows,” Killcen answered, as Stillwater and Canyon arrived.
“Is there a high balcony you can put me on?” Kestrel queried, as he grabbed the staff that leaned against the wall.
And so, only seconds later, he found himself with his staff and his knife, standing on a balcony of a brick-structured building. It was mid-afternoon, and the curtains were open, letting him see into the empty room inside. With his knife he pried the door open, and let himself and the imps inside. He went to the door and listened, then opened the door and looked out into a silent hallway. Faint sounds were coming from below.
It felt good to have the staff in his hands again, ready to be used as a weapon. He knew that between Lucretia and his staff, and his now protected chest, he could carry out a great deal of destructive close-range battle, even though his aching shoulder limited his fighting ability. And he would have the advantage of surprise, he hoped.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart Page 25
